New round of investment
Fast growing Auvik Networks raises $15 million
WATERLOO — Auvik Networks has raised $15 million in a second round of financing, and will use the funds to accelerate product development as well as expand sales and marketing.
OpenView Venture Partners out of Boston led the new round of investment. Two Canadian venture capital firms that previously invested in Auvik Networks — Rho Canada Ventures out of Montreal and Toronto-based Celtic House — also participated in this round of investment.
Marc Morin, Auvik’s co-founder and chief executive officer, said the Waterloo company founded in 2011 is growing quickly. Since it moved into offices in a building at 180 Columbia St. W. last September, it has doubled in size to more than 50 employees.
“We plan to double in size again well within 18 months,” said Morin.
Auvik provides software tools that automate network management for small and medium sized businesses.
The other founders are chief technology officer David Yach, former chief technology officer for software at Research In Motion, and Alex Hoff, vice-president of sales and marketing, a former senior product manager at Sandvine.
The new round of investment will be used to speed up the development of some new products and expand sales and marketing not only in North America but Europe as well.
“We’ve been quietly going about our business, building out the business,” said Morin, a tech sector veteran who also was a founder of Sandvine, Pixstream and Emforium Group. “We’ve got a real product that the customers want, building out a sales and marketing engine to go after it, so it has been lots of fun.”
Arsham Memarzadeh, the associate at OpenView who worked on this deal, said the Boston-based firm invested in Auvik for three reasons.
First, the co-founders are among the best technologists and entrepreneurs in Canada. Second, no other company is providing automated network management tools like Auvik. Third, Auvik has nailed product-market fit with accelerating growth.
“There is just a total gap in the market,” said Memarzadeh. “With the continued push to the cloud, servers become obsolete and the network becomes everything, especially the more devices you have in the workplace that are connected.”
Auvik provides automated monitoring of those networks.
“It is something they do really, really well and their clients find a lot of value from,” said Memarzadeh.
“Just fantastic economics all the way around.”
Morin says he is taking the same, highlevel approach with Auvik as he did with the previous startups he was involved in.
“Build product that somebody wants, get it in front of them, make it a valuable company that is going after something interesting,” he said.
“You’ve got to focus on the product, the customers — what they want,” said Morin. “Build something of value and then things happen, hopefully good things.”